A lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeks to force the administration to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests filed more than a month earlier. The requests seek all records related to the DOJ investigation into Epstein and Maxwell that mention Donald Trump, including any code word or pseudonym used to refer to him or Mar-a-Lago. The suit cites reports that Attorney General Pam Bondi told the president he was in the Epstein files and that Bondi directed about 1,000 FBI agents to search roughly 100,000 Epstein-related files and flag documents mentioning the president. The administration explored releasing grand jury transcripts and reinterviewing Maxwell; Maxwell denied seeing the president in inappropriate settings, and victims expressed outrage at perceived preferential treatment of Maxwell while incarcerated.
"The games the administration is playing with re-releasing already public documents while withholding the Trump-Epstein files and other key information is another betrayal of survivors," former Amb. Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund said. "In a democracy, transparency isn't optional. It's the law, and it's the bare minimum the American people are owed." The White House and the Justice Department did not respond to Axios' request for comment.
The administration has pursued multiple avenues to satisfy the public's appetite in learning more about the Epstein files, including long-shot bids to release the investigation's grand jury transcripts and conducting new interviews with Maxwell. In those interviews, Maxwell said she had never seen the president "in any inappropriate setting," and that he was "a gentleman in all respects."
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